Rio Grande to halt flow after historic low year

Elephant Butte to hit 49-year low

LAS CRUCES >> Expect the Rio Grande to once again become the "Rio Sand" in a few days, capping off a year of historic lows.

Federal officials announced the summer irrigation will end this week -- the shortest season ever in the region's nearly 100 years of irrigation history, thanks to an ongoing drought, they said. It lasted just a month and a half.

The end of the irrigation season also leaves one of the state's largest reservoirs, Elephant Butte Lake, at just 3 percent of capacity -- a nearly 50-year low, according to federal numbers.

"This is the shortest (season) we've ever had," said Bert Cortez of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in El Paso. "We started making releases from Elephant Butte in 1915."

Last week, the water flow from Elephant Butte into Caballo Reservoir just downstream was halted, Cortez said. And Monday or Tuesday, the flow out of Caballo Reservoir will be cut off for the year.

If Caballo Reservoir is shut off Monday, residents can expect to see the river flow near Las Cruces diminish substantially July 17 or July 18.

"It doesn't put us in a very good position, with not knowing whether we're going to get a monsoon season that will amount to anything," said Gary Esslinger, manager for Elephant Butte Irrigation District, which covers southern Sierra County and Doña Ana County.

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Water for the district's thousands of farmers began being released June 1, much later than normal.

This season, EBID got about 53,000 acre-feet of water; El Paso Co. Improvement District No. 1 received 44,000 acre-feet; and Mexico got about 3,700 acre-feet, said Phil King, consultant water engineer for EBID.

"All three of those are record-lows," he said. "It was a rough one. Next year we're going to start out with a pretty dry river."

In wetter years, when EBID has received what it considers a full allotment, Doña Ana and Sierra county irrigators had access to more than 400,000 acre-feet for the season, Esslinger said.

Farmers have turned to wells to make up for the absence of river water -- dipping heavily into local groundwater supplies.

Delivering the small amount of water was difficult, Esslinger said. But he credited his staff with making the best of a bad situation this season.

Low lake

Elephant Butte Lake and the total water storage, which includes Caballo Lake as well, are expected to reach their lowest end-of-season levels since 1964, according to info from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. That year, the butte held just 50,100 acre-feet, or 2.4 percent. With Caballo Lake factored in, the total amount of water remaining was about 58,700 acre-feet.

The projected levels for this year are 60,000 acre-feet -- 3.1 percent full -- for Elephant Butte and 5,000 acre-feet -- 2 percent of capacity -- for Caballo. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, enough water to cover an acre to 1 foot in depth.

Dismal outlook

The current low lake levels leave thousands of EBID and El Paso-area farmers in a dire situation going into 2014 because there's essentially no water in storage for next year.

"They're not going to be able to carry over anything at all," Cortez said.